Syria, the Big Russian Bear, and Iran

8022012

When I lived in Damascus, at the time the TV had only two channels. One of them used to broadcast Russian ballet performances quite regularly. Also, Iranian pilgrims were everywhere. An entire segment of the Syrian tourist industry has been set aside just for Iranian pilgrims visiting important Shia shrines. I saw busloads, and I even learned that certain hotels were exclusively serving Iranian patrons.

So, the official public UN stance of Russia in vetoing the resolution last week, along with the Iranian regime’s less public military and security support for the Assad regime, all come as little surprise to me. But, both Russia and Iran are playing a most heinous and ominous role in the destruction of the Syrian people, including countless unarmed civilians, women, men, and children alike. Michael Weiss published an article in the Telegraph that explicitly describes what’s happening in Syria, and the complicity of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah in the slaughter of thousands:

“For those who haven’t had lunch today, I encourage you to see up-close what Russian weapons and Iranian and Hezbollah ‘military consultants’ have helped accomplish in Syria. This video is of a young boy in Homs. His entire lower jaw has been removed from his head and I’m told that this is more watchable version of the footage; an earlier reel went round where he hadn’t been anaesthetized yet.”

“Vladimir Putin’s copper-bottomed support for Bashar al-Assad at the UN Security Council can be taken in one of two ways. There will be those who claim that here was one organized crime lord pledging solidarity with his human ferret counterpart. The two men really do understand each other and are even beginning to replicate each other’s CVs. Assad is doing to Syria what Putin did to Chechnya a decade ago and under the same pretext of combating “terrorists”. Moscow had its dodgy apartment bombings in 1999, blamed with credible evidence on the FSB, to justify the razing of Grozny. Damascus has had its spate of “suicide bombings” lately, blamed by the regime on the following actors: al-Qaida, the United States, Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Syrian opposition and loyalists of former Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam. Footage showing the mukhabarat’s theatrics before and after these incidents matters not at all because the Assad regime, with a little help from Russia Today and other Kremlin mouthpieces, has also blamed “foreign media” for presenting a mere domestic misunderstanding as a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Taken another way, Putin’s support for Assad is a foreign policy “victory” that comes at just the right time for Russia, weeks ahead of a presidential election.

…If certain comment editors have difficulty finding Syrians on the ground who want NATO fighter jets overhead, I’ll be glad to introduce them to several.

Here is al-Sheikh: ‘As an activist and a coordinator for the Khaled Bin Waleed brigade, I state that we in Homs, Idlib and Damascus suburbs call for unilateral American and British intervention. We also want to improve our relations with the US administration and people after the revolution, but we need you to save us. We are getting slaughtered, save us’.”

You don’t need me to point out that the United Nations has miserably failed the Syrian people. The UN is broken and is far from democratic. If anything, this whole incident underscores the need for a UN overhaul; at a minimum, there should be provisions for those countries that wish to implement the R2P mandate in cases such as Syria to override Security Council vetoes. I am a diehard believer in state sovereignty, but I am a human rights activist first and foremost. Russia, Iran, and China have done a tremendous disservice to humanity. Now, Assad is having a field day in exterminating his own people: protesters and by-standers alike, civilians making a run for it to grab some bread (now in dire short supply), families huddling in their homes, and individuals picked off by snipers.

This reminds me of the bloody, ruthless killings in the former Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavia analogy is not off base… remember how long it finally took Western powers to intervene in Bosnia and stop the massacres?!! You’d think that we all have learned from lessons past.

The Syrian people have the right to live without fear. Most of all, they have the right to live. What the hell happened to the “Responsibility to Protect” civilians, that was so potently invoked in the case of Libya? I write this with a very heavy heart for Syria, and wish that ballet performances would have been the extent of Syrian-Russian relations. Sadly, it’s not.

NOTE: Everything I write in this blog constitutes my personal opinions and views.